Another Course that you may want to consider for your GRE Test Preparation Journey

Intended Audience

This course is a self guided packaged course that students can go through on their own time. The course is great because it doesn't force you to study using traditional methods, where you must stick to scheduling of your class, waiting for instructor.

Type of Questions on this course

One kewl, part about this course is that it's not just practice questions in text type of format only, but the type of questions that also also has video explanations. Basic comparison to that is... imagine you are going to the restaurant and look at the menu... has it ever happenned to you?

Analogy Comparison

Have you ever went to the restauraunt and looked at the menu? I imagine you did.... well if you did, then probably you have noticed the menu... and have you noticed how if you go to IHOP restauraunt, you will see visual menu with pictures, and if let's say you go to italian restauraunt you often see nothing, but text type of menu mostly... right? and what's worth menu even got some italian words, that you can barely make out of.... well what Magoosh did is very similar to this comparison.

Studying from Magoosh is like going to IHOP (from the perspective of having video explanation for each question) and viewing the menu with pictures rather then text. In fact all the courses should have that, but surprisingly not all do!. It's very important to see how exactly particular question was solved rather then relying simply on detailed answer explanations written in text.

Rome Wells, Cross Level Analysis for this GRE Packaged Course

Many students simply do not realize that, book methods are not exactly great in comparison to other methods that exist on the market when preparing for your GRE exam. Here is why books don't compare well to this particular resource that I am about to describe next from the perspective of overall student's learning effectiviness.

Studying with the book can take longer, and some students are simply like to read less, and watch more and better process information visually.

Reason 1. Book is a static method, and not dynamic. Book studying is mostly sequential, from 1 chapter to the next. Sure sometimes you can skip chapters, but it doesn't actualy guide your or suggest you with video information based on performance. Well this GRE course described here does.

Reason 2 Book Affordability

Reason 2. Book is cheap, quality test prep material, doesn't cost small amount to make, it takes a lot of money to make. This particular packaged course happen to be high quality type of study materials, that simply does not cost too much, yet still provides high level of learning effectiviness.

Books don't use smart analytics, that packaged courses leverage to guide you in getting better score

Reason 3. Book doesn't compare score from other students using concepts of BigData, this course does, and leverages other student's data to provide score predictive analysis based on other student's GRE scores. Knowing your predictive score can really help students in strategizing their skill set and practice habbits in the right direction as oppose to studying blind. This increase level of learning effectiviness and makes it much easier to comprehend content knowledge.

Reason 3. In book you simply can not ask someone question, in this course tutors provide assistance by email

Brief Visual Summary from Rome Wells

Anyway now that you seen brief difference about, books, feel free to check out a bit more about the actual Magoosh course. First thing that comes to my mind when i hear the word Magoosh, is word woosh... kind of like a super slick way of destroying your exam, and getting rocking your way to better score! Note there are many things that come to my mind when i see certaing things one way as oppose to another, I have mathematical and engineering brain, so sometimes the way i see things may be completley overwhelming for others to follow. However, i try to break it down for you visually for you, so you can better understand what on earth am i talkin about when describing any particular course and providing review.

Rome Wells Quick Price Analysis and Review

This packaged course offers several options, where pricing of Math section is $79. Pricing of Verbal+AWA is also $79, and Premium option where you get to have both (Math + Verbal & AWA) The pricing structure, is indeed flexible, it provides students who are not so great in math enroll into Math course only and not pay 79 bucks! However, $20 saving personally I don't think is worth it. If anything I would go for Premium option that covers both Math+Verbal & AWA regardless if I am good in math or not for only $99.

Money Saving Tip from Rome Wells

Ocassionally test prep vendors during promotional periods, give out coupons to Rome Wells, however not all the time, but when they do, Rome Wells often shares these coupons with students to help them out and save money on their GRE test preparation journey. If Rome Wells, contacted you direct, be sure to say hi, and ask if he can hook you up with some coupons. When you contact Rome Wells, you can also ask for academic advice, and Rome Wells can assist you in making decision of what test preparation journey you should take in order to achieve highest level of success in your GRE academic studies.

Rome Wells Detailed Magoosh Analysis

Hope you enjoy detailed visual overview of what the GRE course actually offers. Here is what I particularly like about this course. The Study Path Schedule Plan provides flexibility for students to study based on their own schedule and based on the suggestions from Magoosh depending on how much time you have left until your GRE exam. Some students simply prefer to study right the last minute, and enroll into the course weeks before the exam.

Study Path Plan Schedules Review

Although the study path schedules are designed from 1 to 6 weeks period, from my personal opinion studying for this exam within 1 week only is definitely not a good idea, especially if you are preparing for GRE for the first time. However, Magoosh is doing a good job by recommending amount of materials you should study. Best comparison for that would be, when a doctor is prescribing to a patient specific pill to get better, similary Magoosh is prescribing their study plan path for a particular time period and directing you in the right direction.

Note Magoosh is not the first one to follow this approach in preparing students by prescribing them study plans, in fact take a look at my other review page, where there is a similar product to this GRE course, but in GMAT exam (not GRE), where the maker of the course is literally calling his study plans, pills.... (kind of cool if you ask me, but no it's not the type of pills like in the movie Limitless where you take a pill and you become smart, although that would be pretty darn kewl!) However, of course you are not studying for GMAT, but I am just letting you know that, Magoosh is not the first one to come up with this.

Comparison to other courses such as GraduateX (deep level analysis)

Both Magoosh and GraduateX are mobile friendly. Magoosh doesn't really provide any tutoring or live type of options. However, that's understadable, tutors are not that easy to come by. Plus actual tutors woouldn't really teach for a low amount of money, when they can teach locally and get paid way more per hour then having to teach anyone else online, or even bother responding to any type of questions (that's just the reality). Of course there are exceptions to that, but essentially tutoring method is simply more expensive then self guided option. So far both courses GraduateX and Magoosh are relatively similar.

My personal take on Magoosh and and GraduateX

However I like GraduateX course personally better, because it gives you more questions specifically 1500 +, the only thing GraduateX does not have is demo, however you can view sample videos and instantly get an idea what the course is all about.

Plus I don't care what anyone tells me if I am preparing for GRE test, and this happens to be one of my most important test in my life, because it determines my decision of what graduate school I can get into, then I better be darn sure that I have plenty of time to study ahead of time. GraduateX provides 1 year access, which is way more realistic amount of time that you would need to prepare, rather then relying on 6 month access, and then realizing that you didn't spend enough time to prepare. The way I see it, GraduateX simply provides twice as much amount of time for you to prepare.

Meaning GraduateX offers 1 year access, as oppose to Magoosh 6 months. However, for these of you who do not care about amount of time you need to study, and are scheduled to take your test within 6 month, then Magoosh may be better fit for you However for me personally, even I am less then 6 month away from my test date. I wouldn't risk it and here is why, instead i would chose GraduateX GRE course (if I was under this particular circumstance, note if your circumstance is different you may end up chosing Magoosh instead).

My personal Choice is GraduateX (however only if the listed condition applies)

I would still go with GraduateX study, for simple reason of having access to more questions instead of 1000, 1500+ 1.5 times more, and having access to community forum where you feel like you are studying within a group (although Magoosh also has forum, but it's not exactly the same), and knowing that in case if I do happen to get poor score on my exam then I can simply cancel it and know on the back of my mind that I still have more time left with GraduateX 1 year access to prepare further.

In case if you did not know ETS does allow you to cancel your score if you take your exam and simply realize that your score is not good enough (obviously you must talk to your academic advisor and your graduate school to see which score would be desirable for your college/university).

Here is official quote from ETS "At the end of the test, you will be given the option to cancel your scores. You cannot cancel your score for one section of the test and have the scores for the remaining sections reported"

Hypothetical Scenario Cost Analysis

So now that you read this quote, ask your self simple question? What is going through your mind?

Well what's going through my mind, is the fact that I will have to retake exam again, if i do.... well... hmm... that will set me back couple of hundred bucks, but what's even worth is if you bought Magoosh and your access is about to expire, because you only purchased 6 months access, and happen to fail, and let's say 4 months out of this 6 already passed by after you took the test, than that leaves you only in panic mode trying to increase your score for 2 remaing months by studying from Magoosh material!

However, by that time you have already probably ended studying through majority of the test questions anyway since there is only 1000 of them as oppose to 1500. So as the result you will have less questions to practice with left, and under risk of possibly spending money again in order to renew your Magoosh subscription. Now do the math how much that will set you back? Well let's say you had to renew your subscription again for $99, how much exactly did you end up spending?

So how much money can it set you back if you end up failing your exam?

Well, if you count total costs of your studies, $99 initially for Magoosh, $99 later + cost of the additional GRE exam that you must retake, with risk of still possibly not doing well. Why do I say still even though you renewed your membership? Reason for that is because 2nd time studying from the same material is not necessarially good idea especially if after studying with Magoosh for the first time it didn't do magic trick for you, and if it did not, then why bother renewing it second time, when instead it just makes sense to go with another test prep provider?

Let's just say this particular scenario did happen, and you ended up studying with Magoosh, but didn't do well, then at that point it would simply makes sense to study with another study resource such as GraduateX and not renew your Magoosh material. However, GraduateX is more expensive than Magoosh, and it perfectly makes sense why it's more expensive, better forum, better sense of community studying (so this way it doesn't feel like you are studying alone), more questions to prepare with, and clean and intuitive interface (not Magoosh also has clean interface and advanced features, but it's not the same), without 2 many bells and whistles, making it easier to focus.

Just in case if you do decide to go with Magoosh Packaged course first and end up not doing well

Therefore if you do end up studying with Magoosh and do end up spending money initially, and then end up not getting quiet the right score you needed, this can set you off back for couple of hundreds of bucks for your initial test, test preparation material from GraduateX and additional amount of money for the next test. Hmm if you ask me... that's a lof money! So why bother going through that path in a first place... If that's the case, then why not just from the start enroll into GraduateX? This is my take on this. Note there is a flip side of this story as well, such as, what happens if you did not do well with GraduateX either?

Well then at least in that case you can say Ok, well.. i didn't do well, but i do have plenty of access time allowed, and dependend how bad I did, I may say to my sell... well...it looks like i just barely got the right score....ok so that's not bad... then since i am enrolled into GraduateX and have some time left over from the 1 year subscription, let me study from GraduateX a bit more and not buy anything as additional study resource and take GRE test again. After all GraduateX has more questions then Magoosh and simply provides me with more access time, not rushing me to take this exam right away or forcing me into renewal period.

Do you see both sides of hypothetical situations? How realistic is it?

What I just described here in both scenarios? It's very realistic! Students study for their GRE exam well ahead of the graduate school even when they are still obtaining their bachelors, to increase maximum level of their learning effectiviness and higher chances of doing better on this test, and prepare well in advance for this exam! Hence, if that is the case, then there is even more reasons to simply get GraduateX instead of Magoosh.

However, not everybody is like that,some students prefer to study the last minute or perhaps already studied from self guided books using static method and simply want affordable way ot preparing for their GRE without spending too much money, just to fill in their knowledge gap..... if that's the case then perhaps Magoosh is the best option here, since it is affordable and is high quality and does help you improve your verbal + AWA + math.

Plus Magoosh offers flash cards (great for memorization, although my personal advice is... memorize less and understand concepts more!)for better memorization and also offers course demo, and does give you that guarantee to try your course to see how well you do and even cancel it after 7 days without any strings attached, if for whatever reason you are not happy. Also another good thing about Magoosh is the fact that it actually gives you 3 practice exams, where you can literally pretend like it's a real test and study from, instead of simply studying from the questions as oppose to GraduateX.

So wait what is better GraduateX or Magoosh for My GRE test prep studies?

The bottom line is I am not here to pull you in multiple directions to say what is best, it really depends, on your educational goals, your particular educational background, and experience, hence it's simply difficult to say, what is best for your particular needs, pluse remember sometimes test prep vendors end up hooking up Rome Wells with discount coupon savings, during promotional periods, these coupon savings Rome Wells can pass down to you, sometimes one company provide better coupon savings then another!

Hence, if affordability is a serious issue with you and you really can't make up your mind which course is best, then don't hesitate to respond back to Rome Wells (if he contacted you direct or by sending email request, sometimes coupons that test prep vendors provide are simply better then what you find anywhere else!, note it's also very possible that there is no promotional period offered and no discount coupons), When you do respond to Rome Wells ask 3 simple things.

Respond back and say Hi

Then say, Rome Wells for which courses can you hook me up with coupons?

Tell Rome Wells exactly your situation, your educational background, when is your exam, how have you studied so far, be very specific.

Response you may get back can be either voice customized GRE test prep advice to you or text based response, many students when they contact back Rome Wells are surprised to hear his voice and find it very interesting, and end up quickly communicating with Rome Wells very helpful, in determening which study material is best for them.

Anyway this page is about Magoosh and not GraduateX therefore let me cover other key points from Magoosh Packaged course

First of all course is mobile friendly, IOS and Android are great ways to access it, you do not need to get any DVDs or any other methods of downloading content, it's just subscription based and you get access into it and simply study from it. Best way to really see what the course is all about is to go through the free trial that Magoosh offers.

Predictive Score Feature

This particular feature, I personally find very unique in comparison to other GRE test prep methods, and even in comparison to other test prep vendors specializing in different tests such as GMAT, LSAT, CPA etc... This feature is pretty cool, because it looks at your progress analyzes your performance and compares it to other students performance who are also using Magoosh and provides precitive score range for your performance on the actual GRE.

Magoosh accomplishes that by comparing your performance in the program with data from other Magoosh test takers. In another words, It compares data from students who actually used Magoosh during their test preparation studies and GRE scores received to your performance, thereby allowing better predict your score range and helping you maximizine your chances of at least increasing your score by 5 or more point. However if you ask me personally...

I think if you trully want to go after these extra points when you have already exhausted all of the resources, then definitely go for local tutor, often local tutor can dive into your mind in away that no computer self guided software can, that's actually one of the reasons why many students prefer to use both self guided GRE study approach and local or online tutor.

Local is better then online, because local tutor can look directly in your eyes, and keep you focused and motivated, as oppose to simply watching someone in the screen. Of course there are many other reasons why local tutor is imply more effective method, then self guided method in many cases, however not everyone can afford one. Speaking of local tutors feel free to check our sister site www.TutoringServices.com in case if you need one, kewl part about these tutors, is that some of them only charge $15 for first lesson and after that no agency recurring comission fees, this is way better then hiring agency tutors.

Intuitive Dashboard Interface

Students who do enjoy consistent, streamlined interface will enjoy course dashboard. The dashboard itself is easy to navigate and includes awsome advanced features. You can even customize your study experience by difficulty and subject. Another kewl feature that I like better with Magoosh is that you can actually create custom quizzes and chose time and then view summary of your past answers filtered by question type and difficulty.

You can practice this way, just make sure you do that mostly with questions that you didn't do so well on, to better reinforce your skill set. Students who enjoy taking charge of their learning experience and don't need more structured test prep course program, will enjoy flexibility of being to create custom quizzes.

Cons (i.e things Magoosh can do better)

Magoosh should consider offering Online Tutoring Program to increase student score by more then just 5 points, to provide group tutoring classes and 1 on 1 online tutoring lessons.

Offer way more practice tests then 3 practice tests and provide way more access then 6 months, 6 months is just not realistic for many students, who want to study way ahead of time.

Pricing should go up instead of going down in exhange for better course quality with more adaptive features or at least option should be provided for that while remaining default course test taking option still affordable to the rest of the students, better course length access and more adaptive type of course, that adjust to student's learning profile. Magoosh during some promotional period offers discount up to whooping 67% (be sure to ask Rome Wells for details, only sometimes such promotional offers are available) this makes course relatively more affordable for students outside of USA, who do not have same standard of living as students in USA, which makes sense.

Provider more quality and bump up the price, many students prefer more quality

Provide better adaptive method of learning

Magoosh should provide more adaptive method of preparing for students, rather then having video answers for particular question, adjust to student's style of learning. Such level of adaptive learning exists with other tests such as GMAT or CPA take a look at my GMAT review for examPAL product (to see what I mean), or CPA for accounting adaptive course (to see what I mean)

Course must allow students to easily contact some GRE tutor locally directly from Magoosh site, that I simply do not see.

Conclusion

Magoosh comes close to the level of helping students prepare for GRE, yet still providing adequate learning effectiviness for many students. Many students provide great reviews and if you are preparing to take your GRE, then definitely at least give Magoosh a try, before deciding what test prep material you end up purchasing. To try your Magoosh GRE course click here.

And good Luck in your GRE test prep journey, from Rome Wells, educational advocate, test preparation advisor, local math tutor, IT Network Security Engineer, former ceritifed math teacher for the state of CT, founder of Tutoring Services, LLC multiple business models and GRE Friendly aspirant, and don't forget to respond back to Rome Wells if he referred you to this site.Also in case if you have brother, or sister or a friend studying for any other exams, such as LSAT, GMAT, GRE, Teacher Certification Exams, MCAT, CPA, PMP or any other similar tests feel free to refer them to this site, to help them make informative decisions about their educational test preparation journey and help them also save money.